PHA Analytics

Based on experience from performing risk assessments for thousands of projects of varying sizes across Western Canada, and around the world our risk consultants have created PHA Analytics to help you extract maximum value from your studies.

ACM provided excellent work as always to move the group along and provide consistent wording for the risk assessment.

Utilities Engineer

Mining Company

PHA Analytics	Analytics included with ACM PHA's
Safeguard Criticality Analysis	Stakeholder Review
Recommendation Prioritization	Safeguard Analytics
Safeguard Operating Status (SOS) Field Audit

Safeguard Criticality Analysis

Do you know the status of your critical safeguards in your plant today? ACM Facility Safety has developed a methodology to use data already existing in your PHA to compare existing safeguards. This approach incorporates factors such as consequence severity, likelihood of hazardous events and safeguard usage in order to evenly compare all types of safeguards including mechanical devices, control system alarms and operating procedures. ACM’s in-house Safeguard Profiler software is utilized to prepare PHA files, regardless of worksheet format, for Safeguard Criticality Analysis.

Included with the Safeguard Criticality Analysis report is the relative ranking of your safeguards, and comprehensive bowties which visualize safeguard usage across the facility. This data can subsequently be used to prioritize maintenance activities and provide safeguard awareness training to operations staff.

Download Safeguard Criticality Analysis Table of Contents

Recommendation Prioritization

After a PHA session is completed, the next task is to address the recommendations. Often, there are a formidable number of recommendations from the session and efforts are made to find a way to prioritize the work. In most standard PHA reports, the recommendations are sorted by the highest residual risk after existing safeguards. This will provide a general idea of which recommendations are important – high vs medium risk – but how do you further differentiate between the high risk items? Which one is the highest priority? These are questions our consultants have received from clients over time and are the basis for our Recommendation Analytics.

To answer these questions, ACM Facility Safety has developed a methodology which includes the development of recommendation trees as well as performing risk based evaluations for each recommendation. This detailed evaluation provides further prioritization and helps define the path forward for recommendation execution.

Download Recommendation Prioritization Table of Contents

Safeguard Operating Status (S.O.S.) Field Audit

What is the gap between the safeguards used for risk reduction in your risk assessments and the current operation? By working with field personnel, historical data, maintenance records and operating procedures, the SOS Field Audit is able to address this question. The field audit identifies the safeguards that are currently, or historically have been, bypassed, inhibited, unavailable, undocumented, invalid or otherwise compromised. In addition, information the key threats to your safeguards will be identified.

In a previous S.O.S. Field Audit with a Midstream client, it was discovered that over 35% of safeguards were out of service in the selected scope.

Stakeholder Review

The Stakeholder Review is a method to provide high level, target feedback on a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) session to individuals who are not required to be in the PHA session, but have a vested interest in ensuring the high quality of process safety related activities. These individuals include plant managers, VPs and CEOs among others. The Stakeholder Review is a qualitative process that focusses on providing insights on the safety culture of the PHA group, facility and organization. These insights are formed through a structured interview process with the PHA facilitator regarding factors that may have affected the quality of the hazard analysis session. Interview questions are based on categories such as: PHA Team Culture, Documentation, Rigor, Competency, and Procedures/Tools. This feedback, including points of threat and excellence, are shared openly in an executive meeting.

Safeguard Analytics

Safeguard Analytics provides a way to further explore the diversity of current safeguards, and future safeguards (recommendations), in a facility. Insight is provided regarding the reliance on people based safeguards (alarms, procedures, occupancy etc.) versus mechanical and automated, leading to discussion around safeguarding balance and the efforts in place to ensure the integrity of all types of safeguards. Further, the balance between safeguards currently installed and recommended is highlighted for high risk scenarios. The recommended safeguards are also broken down based on associated safeguarding category. This analysis provides clarity regarding the actual level of risk in the facility and the types of safeguards needed to reach acceptable levels as defined by the PHA team and corporate risk matrix.

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